


Drabbles Of Big Damn Heroes

by melliyna



Category: Criminal Minds, Scarlet Pimpernel - Orczy, West Wing
Genre: Comment Fic, Drabble Collection, F/M, Families of Choice, Female Characters, Female Friendship, Female Protagonist, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-06-24
Updated: 2010-06-24
Packaged: 2017-10-10 06:18:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 875
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/96536
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/melliyna/pseuds/melliyna
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Four awesome female characters, four drabbles. Molly Wyatt-Ziegler, Marguerite St.Just, Haley Hotchner and Emily Prentiss.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Drabbles Of Big Damn Heroes

**Marguerite St. Just: The Summer Wind Did Not Tell**

 

It is a different thing, in England and Marguerite knows she has never been patient, exactly. When he goes, she wishes to accompany him. Her damned fool of a husband, who she loves.

She loves him not for the mask he wears, but for the moments he can set it aside and that he can wear this mask. And yet, yet he loves her. And betimes, she wonders if the man is incapable of being anything but the fop.

Yet he married a French actress. He has never, not once, thrown it at her. They have thrown many things at each other perhaps, but they know their scars and wounds. And they know which would be a fatal wound, to press.

There was a time when they had known each other only a little but it is not this time. Marguerite feels their child grow in the English sunshine and sings songs of France. Their child will know that their mother is a French actress and that their father is a good man.

They are both fools together, perhaps.

**Haley Hotchner: They Are My Own**

_Breathe._

It's a rhythm. You might have done a thousand warm up exercises, but it always changes, depending on the theatre. Depending on the acoustics, on the play. Sometimes, it's even about the song list or just about the way your body feels.

Haley likes to think it's about the rush, too. It's about preparing for the chaos, the dance that is what happens when you make a play even at some ridiculous hour when everyone has screamed at everyone else at least once and someone has probably smashed a prop or the lead actor nearly knocks himself out on a spotlight.

Everything is a mess and then, mostly, it comes together. Sometimes, she thinks you do everything right and it doesn't but you make it look like it has.

_You breathe to your own rhythm_

He doesn't matter. There are other things to recall. That screaming fight with Jess, when you both ended up laughing. The way the wind feels, winding down the car window, music blaring loud. Jack, his body warm and floppy, shaking with laughter. Aaron, lying in her arms, all smiles. Debating, in the first college class she'd ever taken. Eating cupcakes, that ridiculous crunch that she'd made during one show in a moment of total silence that she'd been sure everyone heard.

_Breathe_

The bastard doesn't deserve to be looked at.

**Molly Wyatt-Ziegler: Tiny Dancer**

Pointe shoes. They go on carefully, ribbons twined around ankles. There's a way you do this, a ritual peculiar to each dancer (or at least, this is how Molly sees it) and it changes, when you wear these shoes, versus soft ballet shoes. Pointe shoes mean you stand through it all.

Her feet have learned now, to carry all of it. Thirteen blisters, as many calluses as she can count, toes that curl in. Each performance changes them, shapes them, leaves their mark.

These shoes shape your feet, even as Molly knocks them into shape. They work together to lift each other and to get the arch of the feet right and to learn the essence of an arabesque.

Molly knows her father worries over her hurts, over the winces when she comes off stage. She wonders sometimes, why he comes still, if it's going to hurt that much, to see her feet splotchy with blood and the way she bandages them. He stands off to the side, as Mom hands her tape and tells stories. Huck holds her hand. But then, that has always been Huck. They hold each others hand. Her parents hug them, after they walk out of the theatre and there is a warmth there, that is always.

When she dances though, that is when she takes pride in the way her feet are shaped. In the afterwards, in that moment of wincing pain that comes when you take off the shoes. Because it is not conquering the pain, it is that she is working with it, working with her feet to dance.

She hopes to tell her family this, when they wince.

**Emily Prentiss: Here We Are, Family On A Jet Plane**

 

Sometimes she still wants to leave before she gets hurt. Because this isn't what family is. Family is not solid. Emily Prentiss loves her mother but they are brittle fragile. Her mother is her mother, not her family.

Family is two sisters, two brothers (all of whom you can arm wrestle on request and will apparently consent to listen to you laugh, cry or all of the above over takeout and wine) and Mom and Dad. Mom who started off saying no, but he gave her a chance. Dad who started out grumpy and gave her a chance.

There are times when the depths of what Emily Prentiss would do for this family she has been drawn in to scares her. When she looks at the photographs, the gifts, the two small boys who call her 'Aunty Emily' and the pain of losing it all, having gained it is almost too much.

But she's not going anywhere. She cannot leave this family of hers.


End file.
